1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the creation and provisioning of special intelligent network telephone services.
2. Description of Related Art
Telephone service providers are constantly developing new telephone services to meet the needs of existing customers, and further to attract new customers. It is important then that service providers be able to create and deploy these services as quickly and efficiently as possible. Services are typically created using a service creation environment (SCE). These created services are then executed by a service logic execution environment (SLEE) after being deployed into a given communications network. In an intelligent network (IN), for example, the service logic execution environment often sits in a service control point (SCP) node.
Conventional telephone service development generally has the service creation environment generate commands relating to the created service that are specific (i.e., custom tailored) to the service control point, and its associated service logic execution environment, upon which the service is to be executed. Once downloaded to that specific service control point, the commands trigger the building of service scripts. The scripts are then executed by the service logic execution environment included within that service control point to provide the telephone service.
This conventional approach to service creation and provisioning has a number of limitations. The most restrictive of those limitations is that in selecting a certain service creation environment to create a given service, a corresponding service logic execution environment must be used to execute the service. Thus, it is noted that the service creation environment and the service logic execution environment for a given telephone service are tightly coupled. The service logic execution environment corresponding to the service creation environment used in developing the service must then be implemented in the service control point through which the service is being provisioned. Furthermore, with this tightly coupled relationship, it is not possible to use the same service creation environment to design services for implementation on different service logic execution environments. Also, it is not possible to use different service creation environments to design services for the same service logic execution environment.
It is recognized then that this tightly coupled limitation of the prior art service creation and provisioning process may require, in situations where a given service is to be provided on different types of service control point platforms each having a different service logic execution environment, the use of two or more different service creation environments in creating that service for widespread network installation. As the creation and deployment of a single service may require the application of a significant amount of time and effort, it is unproductive and inefficient to expend that effort two or more times to provide the same service for execution on multiple different service logic execution environments. This is especially a concern to the service provider when it utilizes different vendors to supply service control points for its intelligent network, as a different service creation environment may be required for each different service control point upon which the service must be provided. For the service creator, there are also concerns over redundant service development and possible inconsistencies in the plural created services. There is a need then for a technique that supports the de-coupling of the service creation environment from the service logic execution environment. This technique would efficiently allow for the use of any selected service creation environment to develop telephone services for execution on a service control point by any selected service logic execution environment.